Page 11 of Tease

After I’d read the back of a few books, I took out my phone and checked on something Zayn had forwarded me. As it was business-related, I dealt with it so I wouldn’t have to worry in the morning. I made a quick phone call to one of my men to get them to check it out. When I was finished, I found Rina watching me.

“Okay?” I asked, raising my eyebrow.

She gave me a nod before she looked away and pulled the blanket I’d put over her higher on her chest. I walked over and sat close to her as her two cats were sleeping on the bench. Merry had grey striped fur and Pippin was ginger. They stayed in her room overnight, but never tried to get up in the bed with me. Not that I would have minded. I liked cats and Rina’s tolerated me well enough.

Without thinking too hard about it, I reached over and ran my finger along one of Rina’s to get her attention. I needed to touch her. She let out a breath at the contact.

“May I ask what you’re reading?”

“Y-y-yes,” she whispered.

She fiddled with the screen and angled it so I could see the cover. It was a memoir.

“You read these often?”

“N-n-no.” She ran her free hand over the screen. “S-s-she o-overcame a-a-a s-s-stutter as a child.”

My heart hurt at her words.

“I see. You relate to it.”

She nodded.

“I-I-I wish I could be l-l-like her, b-b-but I know I’m n-n-not b-broken.”

I wanted to take her hand, kiss her fingertips and tell her she could never be broken to me, but I stifled the urge.

“If I thought you’d want it, I would offer to torture anyone who made you feel like you were.”

Rina’s eyes widened. I knew I’d said too much. It was in my nature to protect those I cared about. And doing it by violent means was normal for me. It wasn’t for her. Orsino had fought to keep his daughters out of the mafia.

You idiot!

“Y-y-you’d do that for me?”

“Yes.”

I couldn’t be anything but truthful. If I wanted to be more with her, she needed to understand what kind of man I was. What she’d be getting into if there was ever to be anything more than friendship between us. And fuck did I want that.

“I-I-I’ll keep that in mind.”

“It doesn’t scare you?”

She shook her head and gave me a shy smile.

“I-I-I know who you a-a-are, A-A-Arlo. Y-y-you don’t s-scare me.”

Rina had already proven she knew more than she was letting on about her cousins. It wasn’t a hard stretch to imagine she knew what I did for Zayn.

“I’ll let you get back to your book.”

Her storm cloud eyes dulled a little at my words, but she nodded and settled back against her cushions. Instead of discussing what I did with Rina, I took the coward’s way out. She’d admitted to me she wasn’t afraid, so why was I still worried about what she would think if I told her the truth?

She won’t run from you. If there was ever a time for you to be fucking brave and take a risk, it would be now. Nothing is stopping you from telling her how you feel.

I sat there watching her and wondering if I could do it. The only way to know how she felt was by telling her the truth. That meant I had to stop worrying and just do it.

By the time I’d worked up the courage to say something, I noticed she’d fallen asleep. Her tablet was lying on the seat and her glasses were skewed on her face. The image was just about the cutest thing I’d ever seen, but I didn’t want her breaking them. Carefully, I removed her glasses from her face and got up to set them on her desk. When I looked over at her again, I realised I couldn’t leave her there, but I didn’t want to take her upstairs to Sofia’s room either.

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